F.A.T.E.: Free Advancement Through Easymode

[pandabearcat]

I'm kinda confused, how is doing 500 dungeons better than doing 2000 FATEs?

I don't understand the argument of "FATEs are too easy, you'll get bored".

Well by that logic, I'd rather be bored 12 weeks down the road than being bored RIGHT NOW doing the same dungeon again, with minimal progression.

[Orophin]

I'm kinda confused, how is doing 500 dungeons better than doing 2000 FATEs?

I don't understand the argument of "FATEs are too easy, you'll get bored".

Well by that logic, I'd rather be bored 12 weeks down the road than being bored RIGHT NOW doing the same dungeon again, with minimal progression.

I think it's just a preference of playstyle. I'd rather group with people and do a dungeon rather than stand in one spot and spam Blizzard 2 for a few minutes.

Unfortunately dungeons just aren't viable enough to do through the Duty Finder due to queue times and the 50/50 chance you're going to get grouped with people that don't have a clue what they're doing. (thanks to FATE spam)

[mooney6023]

I'm kinda confused, how is doing 500 dungeons better than doing 2000 FATEs?

I don't understand the argument of "FATEs are too easy, you'll get bored".

Well by that logic, I'd rather be bored 12 weeks down the road than being bored RIGHT NOW doing the same dungeon again, with minimal progression.

FATEs are a symptom, not the disease.

MMOs need grind. If they don't have it you finish content well before a reasonably sized development team could possible finish developing more.

Grind used to be party based open world monster grinding or dungeon runs in the "old" days. Sure, it was repetitive and even tedious but slow enough even compared to our current slow 1.5sec global cooldown that a party could communicate constantly through keyboard (pre-teamspeak days). Believe it or not, social interaction alleviated boredom, sort of like playing a table top RPG or poker with your friends.

WoW began the downward spiral. A portion of MMO players and non-MMO gamers didn't like MMOs precisely because of the slower less intensive combat, party requirement, and learning curve.

Initially WoW was notably easier than EQ, EQ2 (launched at same time roughly), and FFXI. It leveled faster, it had more solo content. This brought in more new players who were attracted to the Blizzard name and the concept of a "casual" MMO. Blizzard noted the phenomena and proceeded to at various times lower the difficulty, speed up the leveling, and add more solo content.

Over time Sony (EQ, EQ2) and others saw the revenue Blizzard was producing and ignored their previous experience like lemmings. They knew that maintaining a lead in content while removing the grind would exponentially increase development costs or be impossible. Nonetheless, $$$$$. So a chicken or the egg problem was created. In order to get large sub numbers you make the game casual and quick to level. But, if you do that everyone reaches max and leaves unless you add more content quickly. This is much harder to get funding for and as more MMOs try and fail it just gets harder.

Meanwhile, the developers and the players lose touch with the original poor yet surprisingly effective solution that worked for a smaller but sustainable player base. Social interaction.

At this point I don't think it is a recoverable solution. Investors are no longer interested in minor profits from a sustainable small scale MMO. Graphics and eye candy have significantly raised development costs. The players have been trained to expect the carrot (levels, gear) without the stick (grinding, party play, harsh penalties for failure).

Even if EQNext or FFXIV ARR were built like graphically overhauled old-school MMOs despite investor misgivings, they would fail. FFXIV 1.0 and Vanguard being prime examples of attempts.

There may not be a solution anymore. You can't go back in time. So we will see the continuing trend of MMO launch after MMO launch failing after 6 months or a year as a player based trained by the industry jumps onward to the next game and sustained revenue becomes the domain of cash shop swimsuits and vanity gear.

[pandabearcat]

FATEs are a symptom, not the disease.

*snip*

I can see what you mean, but I don't think this really is the problem here. People are complaining about lack of endgame content but thats because there is a lack of endgame content, not because people are reaching endgame too fast.

Regardless of what path you take to 50, I'd much rather everyone get to 50 and so my friends and I can play together.

The problem is that there is ONE level 50 dungeon (people run Palace for money), and frankly it is so hard to get a group together to even do the primals, that I'm willing to bet 90% of players won't reach bahamut, or don't even know that endgame raid exists.

So for most, there are 2 things to do. Bash head against titan, or run AK.

Thats the reason for endgame ennui, and making it take ages to get to 50 is not the solution.

[Moontide]

Regardless of what path you take to 50, I'd much rather everyone get to 50 and so my friends and I can play together.

The problem is that there is ONE level 50 dungeon (people run Palace for money), and frankly it is so hard to get a group together to even do the primals, that I'm willing to bet 90% of players won't reach bahamut, or don't even know that endgame raid exists.

So for most, there are 2 things to do. Bash head against titan, or run AK.

Thats the reason for endgame ennui, and making it take ages to get to 50 is not the solution.

The first Guild Wars did reaching to max level quickly pretty fine back in the day. Then again more than half of that game's PvE content was "endgame". FFXIV isn't designed that way judging by the content that they have both in the combat stuff and crafting. Hence I doubt they designed it to be too easy and unchallenging for people to reach to the top at such a fast pace.

[mooney6023]

I can see what you mean, but I don't think this really is the problem here. People are complaining about lack of endgame content but thats because there is a lack of endgame content, not because people are reaching endgame too fast.

Regardless of what path you take to 50, I'd much rather everyone get to 50 and so my friends and I can play together.

*snip*

Thats the reason for endgame ennui, and making it take ages to get to 50 is not the solution.

We're not connecting here. And I guess it speaks to the different POV.

IMHO, fast leveling is why you have to wait till 50 to play with your friends. Slow leveling, 50 in 6-9 months leveling, and you would certainly be able to maintain a manageable level gap for party play. Gear would be useful long enough for it to be meaningful before 50 too.

I realize the developers were against slow leveling, fine. But I think after playing this game it was a mistake. They have fallen into the same trap, everyone is reaching max level and no matter how many level 50 dungeons they have launched only a few or less will be run and months will pass before more content is added.

Meanwhile 50 levels of content was breezed through at mach 9. A dozen dungeons saw 1-2 runs per a player on average and tons of non-50th level loot was untouched. That's an amazing amount of development man hours, tuning, and art design that could have been replaced with GC gear expansion attainable via FATE seals.

If they were trying for this speed of leveling and completion they would have been better served by cutting the lower level content substantially and adding all that content to the endgame.

[LaharaZoni]

for the love of god!

make some friends and enjoy the damned thing.

the base of this bickering is generational mismatch. younger demographic and older demographic want different things. what will happen in the end is my older demographic will be phased out. {That's too bad!}

live with it. or wait until the next generation change in 10-20 years.

[Twins]

When you see more than a hand full of people at lvl 50 with full AF gear on the 2nd week of release, there is a problem....the content is too easy, leveling was too fast.

My suggestion is, lower FATE reward a bit, and increase dungeon rewards a lot more (ie. exp, loot), else even the casuals get bored of the game very quickly, unless they put in new content every month.

[Vanroe]

After some of the keyboard smashingly stupid dungeons ive healed, I for one, welcome some mindless FATE xp grind.

Seriously Tanks/dps Dont stand in the big red circles, it is BAD! you'd think after my warning and 6 times getting hit by big AOEs they'd get the hint.

Other than that, my only suggestion would be make each sidequest repeatable on a class that hasnt done them yet.

[Tatiana]

This would be a horrible idea, imo. Instead they should adjust FATE's so that the mobs have more HP, and so that there are less mobs so that they aren't dying instantly without people being able to get credit due to people spamming them. There aren't enough quests worth enough XP to level your jobs without lot's of fates & dungeon grinds. Dungeon's are a pain to get into for a vast majority of the player-base and not everyone will or should roll a healer/tank as that would mess up queue's more all around.

Your idea would be better suited as a new form of content altogether, but not tied to FATEs.